CNN
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In a forthcoming memoir about his time on office, former Vice President Mike Pence recounts a conversation he had with Donald Trump.
Here’s the key bit, from an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday:
“Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and other Republicans had filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to declare that I had ‘exclusive authority and sole discretion’ to decide which electoral votes should count. ‘I don’t want to see ‘Pence Opposes Gohmert Suit’ as a headline this morning,’ the president said. I told him I did oppose it. ‘If it gives you the power,’ he asked, ‘why would you oppose it?’”
“If it gives you the power, why would you oppose it?”
If you had only one quote to understand Trump and how he views the world, that would be a pretty good one.
The only thing that matters to Trump is power – and how to wield it. He views the world as a relentless fight for power and control. The winners are the people who seize power – no matter the cost. There is no “right” in Trump’s worldview. There’s only what you can do – and who can try to stop you.
Which is exactly how Trump ran his presidency.
“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be,” he said in April 2020 around efforts to lift restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trump regularly treated the government as his personal play thing. He grew frustrated when the Justice Department refused to pursue his personal vendettas. He referred to “my military” and “my generals.”
In short: The presidency was a major power trip for someone who has spent his life seeking to acquire and retain just that sort of power.
Which brings us back to the lead-up to January 6, 2021, and the pressure that Trump was bringing to bear on Pence.
For Trump, the only issue was whether someone said that Pence had the power to reject the Electoral College count. Not whether Pence actually had that power under a little thing called the Constitution.
Witness Trump’s reaction to Pence’s insistence that he didn’t have the power to disrupt the electoral vote count from the book excerpt.
“You’re too honest,” Trump told Pence. “Hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts. … People are gonna think you’re stupid.”
See, in Trump’s conception, people who don’t seize power when the opportunity presents itself are not smart. They are rubes who are taken advantage of by savvy people – people like Trump.
Of course, the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy is not the same thing as some power play in the world of business. The stakes are infinitely higher.
Trump has never seemed to grasp that fact.
